Menu

The year I found my voice and started to write: 2013 in 10 posts

As there is only one more full day left in 2013, I looked back at some of my favorite posts from the past year and selected my top ten.

2013 has been a particularly interesting year in blogging for me personally. While I have been a professional blogger in one way or another for 6 years, I found this to be the year that I became somewhat serious about writing. I tried some things that worked, other things that didn’t, and overall I find that I am very satisfied with where this blog—and my writing as a whole—is heading. While I have long had a voice—a loud and often cutting one—I am finally finding a voice, which I didn’t realize I was in search of until I began to discover it.

And I should note that I am fortunate to have the opportunity to maintain this blog at the BDN as, even when we are in contention with each other, I feel very much supported in my endeavors. The BDN is very open to figuring out how to operate in the ever-changing digital plane, one where blogs and traditional journalism live in similar neighborhoods. I realize that my style and that of the BDN are not similar by any means, but I have been allowed to experiment, explore, and work on blazing this trail accordingly. For that I am endlessly appreciative to both the paper and the members of the staff that make this possible.

The Top Ten (presented in no particular order):

The BDN concealed weapon permit holder brouhaha [Part I and Part II]: I wrote about the controversy, and I was disparaging of the responses of the gun rights folks and of the paper itself.

Ask Alex about friendship: I started the Ask Alex column as an exercise in writing in a prescriptive voice, but I was horrible about maintaining it with any regularity. I don’t do resolutions, but I will be much better at maintaining Ask Alex a bit more regularly in 2014. I liked this post especially because of its crowd-sourced foundation. Many of the answers came from people via Twitter and Facebook. (As far as advice written from my own perspective goes, I was also fond of this love advice.)

A girl named Revolution: This guest post came by way of the glorious Caseylin Darcy, and it is about the values she intends to instill in her daughter. I read it when Darcy posted it on Facebook, fell in love with it, and asked her if I could run it as a blog post. It was one of the most popular entries (in traffic and in sentiment) of the year.

Florida!: This is a travel piece that I wrote while I was in Melbourne, Florida. Melbourne sort of reminded me of beach front Hell, and of the fact that I had been meaning to write about my travels to Serbia for somewhere around 8 years.

Predictable LePage stuff: I got sick of writing about politics for a number of reasons. When writing the sort of snark that I tend to write about partisan politics, it is too easy for me to get a positive response from the people who have similar political worldviews to mine. I prefer to write about the topic from a deeper place, particularly one that looks at the politics of life as much as it does the politics of elected imbeciles and hacks. And I enjoy engaging everyone, not just those who agree with me so I have written from this perspective less and less. That said, effin’ LePage, man.

Rest in peace, Al: My friend and hero Alfred Moldovan passed away this year. He was one of the best and most interesting people I have ever known. This is how I remembered him.

Dad: I also wrote about my father, his military service, and his post-military troubles. The aforementioned piece on Melbourne, Florida is the precursor to the style of this essay, but after finishing this one I finally felt like I had actually written something.

Eff you as personal growth: I overheard a father and son having a heart-wrenching conversation about the boy’s future, and it brought my back to some of the lessons I learned in my own sometimes-turbulent youth.

About Alex Steed

Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was an insufferable teenager. He has run for the Statehouse and produced a successful web series. He now runs a content firm called Knack Factory with two guys who are a lot more talented than himself.

Post navigation

Alex Steed

Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was an insufferable teenager. He has run for the Statehouse and produced a successful web series. He now runs a content firm called Knack Factory with two guys who are a lot more talented than himself.